I’ve noticed something I was calling “lack of motivation” in myself lately, and wonder about it, as it seems unlike me. Am I blocked? Am I resting? Am I waiting? Am I finished? Is Saturn sitting on one of my major aspects? I decided to do some direct writing about it, to see what hidden influences and insights might be involved. What IS lack of motivation?
Spiritually speaking there is no such thing as lack of motive. Motive does not need to be generated because it is the life force itself, and if you’re alive you have plenty of it. There is the possibility, though, of being unable to experience the natural life-flow.
For example, certainly in these times of high vibration and accelerating frequency, it is common for subconscious holding patterns based on fear to shake loose and rise into your conscious mind. These residues of survival instincts from the near or distant past might include ideas like: “I will be abandoned if I outshine my mother,” or “I will be punished if I pursue selfish interests.” You can identify these by the “if, then” statements connected to the feeling of contraction or avoidance, and the relative silliness of the thought, once you bring it into the light as a mature human being.
These outdated ideas are what you call blocks, and of course, you must unplug from them and not feed attention and energy into their reality or they maintain the life that you give them. Without fuel, eventually they will fade and not bother you.
But there are other situations that can give the impression of lack of motivation. You may have recently completed a period of karma or a growth phase and may now be in the process of integrating it and realizing the finality of the old, while simultaneously sensing and registering a new sense of what is to come. It takes awhile to break old familiarities and thought/behavior habits, and to set the new in motion. Old habits of identity and worldview can act as a form of clutter and it takes time to even recognize them for what they are since they are so intrinsic to the creation of your reality.
Remember that at this time it is not just that you might move on to do something new, but you are moving on to understand how an entirely new reality will function. Though there are huge changes going on below the surface, to the mind it may seem that “nothing” is happening.
For instance, you may be shifting from an “old” purely will-based mode of ambition—ambition that comes from a desire for goals that distract from feelings of unworthiness, for example—to a more Intuition Age-based mode where creating comes from the desire for joyful service and fulfillment of destiny. This brings a variety of internal shifts that are emotional and physical as well as mental. The adrenal glands are stimulated less and the heart more, for example. This can affect neurotransmitters and hormones. Deep energy patterns are changing—ie, the way energy connects and flows is withdrawing from one entire constellation of logical procedures and is seeking new subtle pathways and braintracks for expression. This takes time to become normal and equalize through all the levels of self.
You may subconsciously still be operating from the habit of forcing a new flow by moving from the left brain: What “should” come next as a logical outgrowth of what’s come before? Who will I be as an extension of who I identify myself as in the world? Yet your soul would have you move from the right brain, heart, aura, and cells, staying in harmony with what the collective consciousness wants you to do for the joy and coevolution of all, including yourself.
When the left brain rules, the bigger part of you that wants to evolve will rebel against the authority of the old way of driving motivation or of achieving goals for the “wrong” reasons. At a certain point, your inner self won’t let you proceed from false motives. You don’t lack motivation, but are learning to sense a new kind of motivation.
Another reason you could feel a lack of motivation is that you may not yet be able to see what you will be doing—because it doesn’t exist yet. Your awareness may be a few “frequency degrees” from being able to envision a new development that will involve you. You may be missing vital information. The world is evolving rapidly and new opportunities and forms of expression are constantly being birthed. Your new direction may be one of them, due to appear any moment. You can feel it coming, but sense timing isn’t quite right. Perhaps the other people who will be cocreating with you are not ready yet. So without a tangible goal that your body can be excited about, you simply wait. Your mind may misinterpret this lack of information or inner sense of premature timing as lack of motivation.
It’s easy during these transition times for your left brain to take over, since it is used to running things. It detests voids and pauses, and wants to fill every space with certainty, even if it’s a negative certainty. So when you are invisibly gestating a new life, your left brain loves to make pronouncements about how wrong-bad-flawed-hopeless-old-unlovable-or-dumb you are. Thus you may be tempted to give up, to become apathetic and lethargic. The turtle withdraws head and legs. This would be fine if, in the stillness, you could fill up with your essence and feel what your true self feels like, then come back into the world with childlike wonder and personal loving connection to all things. But too often, the left brain-egomind keeps thinking about the projected end result of “nothing happening”—death. It is contemplating its own death actually—ego death—but if you identify with this voice you’ll assume you yourself are going to die, or that you should even kill yourself.
So when awareness of motivation fades, let your left brain rest in the quiet. Shift into feeling and directly experiencing the aliveness within arm’s reach. Don’t project into the past, future, or positive or negative visions, but merge with what you have now, to experience it and know it personally—that what’s with you in each moment is actually a living part of you and appears through the great love and service motive of the collective consciousness and unified field. Find a tiny motive rising from your depths—something mundane, close, and simple. Something that comes naturally, the way a child changes from a blue crayon to a red one just because it seems fun.
Enjoy following your attention into the process of doing, and seeing how the doing becomes a physical result. And how you feel satisfaction at each stage along the way. And how attention waves away then comes back home to settle and rest, then rises again to flow into another endeavor.
Practice this in a small way again and again until you can recognize consciously the way this natural creation cycle works—in contrast to the joyless, uninspired, should-based cycles of creativity you may have routinely experienced in the past: “I have to wash the dishes again.” Stay with this new habit and slowly, more complex and expansive ideas will arise, which will seem easy to do and as thrilling as drawing with a red crayon.
Trust this: that while you are alive your soul—the real YOU—is being carried along with all other souls in a process of evolution, and like a stream, the flow sometimes dawdles and burbles, sometimes rushes and crashes. But that evolutionary stream IS your motivation and it will source your Inner Perceiver; it will give you curiosities and thoughts to consider and urges to follow. And what will further you is what gets through to you; you can trust this.
Even if you have a blindspot and cannot see what’s before your nose, even if you stall, it is only temporary. The stream will shift around your logjam and move through you in a slightly different way, so you see and know freshly. The life force does not stop. So do not worry about losing motivation because motive does not come from you, but from the Flow itself.
You are built to shape energy and awareness in a particular way and you will be used for that because you belong in the unified field and the collective consciousness. As you allow the Flow to move through you, it evolves you and what you’re built for evolves so that you become capable of so much more, and interested in new ideas and goals. This is a natural process and requires no effort except noticing what you want to pursue with your attention, what experiences engage you totally and bring deep pleasure.
As you do these things, change your self-talk so that you say things like, “I love this! This is really fun. No matter how many times I do this, it always feels new. I am always entertained by the surprising turns that bring new views and experience.” In this way you will reinforce a new habit of being synchronized with your own creative wave. Motivation, or lack thereof, will never be a worry.
Copyright by Penney Peirce; Illustration by Lisa Congdon